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Sex Crimes

Sex Crime Defense

Thomas C Gallagher, Minneapolis sex crime defense attorney, has been helping people accused of felony sex crimes for over 30 years, in the Twin Cities area and Greater Minnesota.

Considering what is at stake, it is important to have an experienced sex crimes lawyer, like Gallagher, putting forward the defense case. Gallagher has the necessary experience defending people accused of Minnesota sexual assault, rape, child abuse, prostitution, as well as cases involving Minnesota and Federal child porn charges, internet sex crimes, and every type of Minnesota criminal sexual conduct case. Gallagher is proud defend people accused of sex crimes, because there so much at stake, typically based upon little or no direct or real physical evidence.

Sex crimes carry the most severe consequences, but are routinely prosecuted with the least reliable evidence of any type of crime. Why? Traditionally, prosecutors would charge “the most serious, provable offense” based upon the evidence they thought they had. In recent years, many prosecutors have lowered their charging standards.

Now, many prosecutors have become aggressively competitive, looking only for arguable inferences of guilt – ignoring evidence of innocence, ignoring the truth, indifferent to justice. This, combined with the alarming frequency of slip-shod, low quality police investigations and forensic investigation work has resulted in a large number of cases based solely upon accusations.

Accused of a Sex Crime? Call Gallagher: 612-333-1500

Children Can and Do Bear False Witness
Do children lie? Yes – of course they do sometimes lie. What child (or adult) has not? History has shown that children sometimes lie, to police and in court, often under the influence of adults in their life. Do adults lie, claiming to be “victims” when in fact they are not? Or misdirect blame to a more convenient, innocent party? History has proven that they sometimes do. It happens every day.

When a person, regardless of age, tells a story about the past, we are right to wonder “Is this person an accurate historian? What biases filter this person’s perception, memory, report? What subjective perspectives? What agendas? Who stands to gain; and what?”

The prosecution sometimes seeks to shift the Constitutional requirement that the government shoulder the burden of proving – showing with evidence – guilt, by asking: “Why would they lie?” (As if poor historians are generally intentional poor historians.) A better question: “Why should we believe such a grave accusation from this person, given the frailty of subjective perception?” Witness in court are human. Human beings lie. There may be 1,000 reasons, but they are often prepped and coached for their trial testimony by the government.

When someone makes a false allegation against you, you know that it is a false claim, but can you know what is in mind of the accuser? If they are knowingly saying untrue things, can you know their motive for doing that? You may have be able to flag suspicions about why they are lying – where there is a history of conflict, for example – but not always. To feel powerful? To get even? To please a parent? Would it be fair to place a burden upon you to explain or the motives of the person telling lies about you – to put the burden upon you to prove your innocence — to prove a negative?

And of course people can be sincerely poor reporters of historical events. People often believe what they are saying is true, though it may not be. The accuser can come to believe a false story themselves. After repeating it, it can become a false memory. How can you tell someone is lying when they themselves believe the story they are telling? Not by looking them in the eye. We’ll need to look at evidence other than “he said, or she said,” if there is any.

What makes a person an inaccurate historian? The answer may sometimes have more to do with the accuser than the accused or any relationship between them. It could be rooted in the accuser’s hatred, mental health, or cognitive issues of perception, memory or judgment – even “coaching” of allegations, as in many high-profile cases of false accusations.

“An Army of Devils is horribly broke in upon Salem which is the center, and, after a sort, the first born of our English settlements, and the houses of the good people there are filled with the doleful shrieks of their Children and Servants, Tormented by Invisible Hands, with Torture altogether Preternatural.” Cotton Mather, Prosecutor of Witches

“Better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned.” Increase Mather (father of Cotton), 1692 sermon to end the Witch Trials.

Recent cases where falsely convicted people have been unequivocally exonerated by DNA evidence show us how fragile the police and courts are, how easily they have been deceived by false allegations. Those juries convicted innocent people of crimes they did not do, but they were led to it by police, prosecutors, and judges. When bad evidence is fed to a jury, it’s Garbage In, Garbage Out — a sham. A defense attorney must protect the right to a real jury trial, and the right to present a defense by getting courts to allow juries to see all of the evidence for the defense.

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789.

The presumption of innocence; holding the government to its burden of producing real evidence; resolving every plausible doubt in favor of the person targeted by the government; the right to legal counsel of your choice; and other Constitutional laws protecting the accused must be respected and enforced by every juror and every person – in order to protect everyone’s Liberty and Freedom from injustice.

Early in his career, Minneapolis sex crime Defense Attorney Thomas C Gallagher began working in this field on one of the high-profile Scott County Sex Abuse scandal cases in the 1980s. An innocent woman’s children were taken from her for years; she was criminally prosecuted by the authorities for child sex abuse – based on what later turned out to be to be false allegations by a guilty man designed to sabotage his criminal prosecution, via shocking false claims against neighbors.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.” – Thomas Paine

Social workers, police officers, and prosecuting attorney interviewed children, suggested sexual conduct, and influenced them to make or endorse false, fantastic allegations. Sex cases are particularly susceptible to both intentional and accidental injustices of monumental proportions. The children were returned to their mother only years later, after all charges were dropped – but none of their lives would ever be the same. They were permanently damaged by incompetent police, prosecutors and government. Unfortunately, this case was not an aberration. The authorities still file false charges, based upon unreliable interviews of children. Gallagher has handled numerous similar cases over his 30 years as a Minneapolis sex crimes lawyer.

The sooner you can get a criminal defense lawyer’s help in one of these situations, the better. Once an accusation has been made, a good lawyer like Gallagher can help the person accused:

avoid providing evidence police can misconstrue or distort into evidence of guilt;

provide counsel about any requested police interviews or searches;

plan and manage an investigation to refute or disprove false claims; in certain cases;

develop information and evidence to help persuade authorities not to file charges.

If charges have already been filed, it is still important to get the best legal help you can, as soon as you can – given how much is at stake in these cases. Much harm can be prevented by having good legal counsel and representation as soon as possible. It is never too soon to protect yourself from a false charge. A good legal defense requires time to prepare.